Beast Exercise
intro Unit Exercise 4: Draw Your Own Beast
Desire Exercises
Background
In Book IX of Republic, Plato explains the theory of the Tripartite Soul by using the metaphor of a beast with many heads, like a chimera or hydra from Greek myths. The soul is the entire beast, but rather than being controlled by one head, it has many that compete for control, each wanting different things. One head is a human head, representing Reason. A second is a lion head, representing an honor-loving part of the soul that Plato calls thumos, a Greek word that does not have a good English translation, though some editions call it “Spirit” or “Spiritedness”. (Plato likens it to the kind of spirit displayed by guard dogs and warriors.) Then there are many smaller heads of other animals which represent the various appetites. Plato does not say how many there are or suggest particular animals for them, but we might imagine, say, a rabbit head for fear and a pig head for hunger.
In psychological terms, Plato is suggesting that our inner life is not what was suggested in the Gorgias – a matter of rational calculation based on beliefs about what is good – but a kind of competition between a number of different kinds of motivation, each of which can potentially control action. When we are controlled by our appetite by food, the pig head I suggested above is ruling the soul. But Plato leaves Reason in the picture, and when we consider various courses of action, weigh them, and act based on our best understanding, the human head, Reason, is in control. Socrates argues that only Reason is really fit to govern the soul, as it can consider all of the alternatives and figure out what is best, while the other heads are all confined to their own perspective: hunger is aware only of the need to eat, fear of the present real or imagined danger, thumos of what is honorable or shameful. Thus moral cultivation is a process in which Reason, with the help of thumos, domesticates the other sources of motivation and tries to create a harmonious household in which they can each serve their proper functions without running amok.
Exercise
The point of this exercise is to try to identify the various sources of motivation you find within yourself and draw them as a version of your Platonic inner beast. Plato doesn’t tell us what all the sources of motivation are, so you need to figure out your own. What kinds of inner motive forces guide your actions in different moods and situations? Try to find an appropriate animal head (real or imaginary) to represent each of them, and try to draw an image of the motivational structure of your own psyche as a many-headed beast.
We will share and discuss these on Wednesday, so upload an image of your drawing here and bring a way of sharing it in class (either printouts or a screen you can share it on).